


The Choice

by ladyofjest



Category: Doctor Who, The Sandman
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-22
Updated: 2010-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-13 23:45:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/142998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyofjest/pseuds/ladyofjest
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Donna is presented with a choice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Choice

She stood at a control panel with lights as bright as Christmas and a central column dark and silent as death. In her hands, a weathered pair of glasses - she tried them on, but they seemed meant for a thinner face. She ran her hand through floppy hair that wasn't there, trying to shake the cobwebs from her thoughts.

 

 

 

She didn't start - the sudden twin stars in the darkness were familiar, though she couldn't say why. Like in a dream, both haunting and intimate. Her vaguely snapped "What?!" was more habit than true irritation.

 

  


She could pick out the bone white of his face now, his hands, floating amidst the impossible blackness of him - his cloak, his shock of midnight hair.

She turned back to the center console, hands trailing restlessly across knobs and dials. She flipped a switch and the center column began to move, and the glorious sound of it vibrated in her bones. She could have crowed with delight: she dashed to and fro, manic, the need to run and feel and caper madly a fire in her blood, in her hearts.

She stopped short, whirling to face the spectral man who was both terribly alien and yet more at home in this sanctum than Donna could ever hope to be. Her vision blurred behind the glasses she didn't need as half-memories and shards of discarded dreams eddied through her sleeping mind. She snatched them off and glared at the Dream Lord.

"Don't be cheeky with me, mate!" When bewildered, go on the offensive. That was Donna Noble's creed. "Oh sure, we've been here before, but I don't know why your lordship Morpheus bothers!" The stars in the darkness winked out and, with them, Donna's cogency.

Roses and brilliance, all gone in the maelstrom of dying neurons.

Never mind. She'd gone somewhere, hadn't she? Piloted this impossible ship in an ecstatic dance, spun the T--. The T-- the craft out along some incomprehensible line of navigation. She shook her head sharply, shrugged off the stuttering in her mind and ignored the twin stars that dawned once more in the dark. She was on an adventure, and his cryptic cheek be damned! She blinked then, and found doors beneath her hands, the console untrod strides behind her.

Had they always been made of horn? She reached out, hesitant, and they swung away from her touch. Recognition shocked through her and her throat closed with a terror sharper than betrayal.

Beyond the ship's doors was no perceptible land. She saw instead-- almost felt-- red, fractured heat in a pattern that compelled and yet tortured the eye. Mauve and vermilion kaleidoscoped in broken lines, all drawing one to the heart of that terrible, beautiful pain - to alight upon a small dark figure in the non-place, ridiculously fragile, but with a smile so bright it almost eclipsed the ankh burning on her breast.

Donna knew, from her fringe to her toes, that the woman was waiting for her - waiting for everyone - at the end of all things. She turned back to catch something suspiciously like pity in the twisted shape of the Dream Lord's mouth.

 

  



End file.
